An iron ballet in the clouds

The ironworkers who frame tall buildings with tons of steel say they love working up there, walking like cats on steel beams in cold wind and blistering heat.

"There's something about it that gives you a high," said Wayne Bendistis of Landenberg, Chester County, who puts in the first bolts that hold a steel beam in place. It's a job he has been doing for months on Comcast Center, which rises 57 stories - 975 feet above the street - and will soon be the tallest building between New York and Chicago.

"You have a good time," added Jarred Pilarski, 24, of Schnecksville, Lehigh County, an apprentice who is married and the father of three. "It is like playing a sport. You've got to wake up ready to go to work or you'll get caught between the beams and get hurt."

The pay is good - $38.55 an hour, said general foreman Carl Pola of Swarthmore, a third-generation ironworker. And they enjoy pointing out to friends and families the buildings they've helped build. But they say they won't go around bragging that they helped build the city's tallest. "It's just another job," Bendistis said.

When Comcast Center, at 17th Street and JFK Boulevard, is finished, ironworkers will have hoisted 9,200 pieces of steel into place, said Kevin Ducey, project manager for Cornell & Co. of Westville. The smallest weighed 300 pounds, the largest 90,000 pounds.

What do friends and family say of their work? "You're nuts," said Dave Renshaw of Roxborough.

These guys make up what they call a raising gang - one of 15 ironworker teams on this big job. They talk of being comfortable up there. When walking a beam 900 feet above the street, "you don't think about it too much. You just do it," Brian "Oz" Shepherdsonhenry doesn't have town said.

Many followed their grandfathers and fathers into the craft. Others, as Renshaw put it, "came in through the side door" from a vocational school. About 25 apprentices are hired by their union's local annually from hundreds of applications, said Pola, the general foreman.

They talk of loving the work but hating safety regulations written by people who never have been up there, particularly one that requires a safety harness.

"The harness is supposed to keep you from falling," Pilarski said over coffee at Pumpernick's Deli, across the street from the project, during a rain delay.

"But it restrains you if you have to move in a hurry," Bendistis said. "If you need a harness to be comfortable up there, you shouldn't be up there."

Ironworkers learn to be aware of what everybody else is doing, to know the safe places within jumping range if a sudden wind twists a big piece of steel dangling from a crane. "The work requires catlike balance to walk on beams," Renshaw said, "to be able to nimbly get out of the way, perhaps jump to another beam if something goes wrong."

Said Eddie Allen, foreman of the five-member gang: "Everybody knows their job, and they're good at it. There's a lot of fun and camaraderie up there."

"Camaraderie! Eddie's been working crossword puzzles again," Bendistis interjected.

"You've got to be on your toes all the time," Allen continued. "You've got to be aware of holes you could step in. You've got to be aware of what everybody's doing. You've got to have good peripheral vision."

"Peripheral!" Bendistis retorted. "Eddie's definitely been working crossword puzzles."

Tomorrow, dignitaries will gather below for a traditional topping-off ceremony, but Comcast Center will keep getting taller for a week or so. The city's first true skyscraper in 15 years, since Two Commerce Square opened, will get its first tenants in the fall. Completion - landscaping and all - is scheduled for next spring.

Contact staff writer Henry J. Holcomb at 215-854-2614 or hholcomb@phillynews.com.